The Lion King: As Told by Shenzi
by Otter Seastar
Summary: Her opinions, her motives, her secret adventures and untold fate.  See the same old story through different eyes.
1. Beginnings

**A/N: I wrote the first draft of this story eight years ago, and the hyenas still rock my world almost as much as they did then. Smear them and I shall bite you.**

**I don't own the Lion King, or any canon characters. But I used to really want a pet hyena (not very practical, I now realize).**

_The Lion King. The LION King. What kind of title is that? Didn't anything else in the story matter besides which lion was king? Such as me, a hyena who helped make both regime changes possible? _

_Sorry. I've been ticked about that for a while. Anyway, I DID have my own part in this story. It seems that most creatures just don't care about hyenas much. But perhaps you do, seeing as how you've come to my den. So gather 'round and I'll tell you my tale:_

I was born in an elephant graveyard, into the shadows of a hard land. I would play hide-and-seek among the bones with my brothers, Banzai and Eduoi. Well, I mostly played with Banzai, while Ed (we called him that before we could pronounce "Eduoi", and it stuck) gnawed bones and chased his tail. Poor Ed was a fluke—hyenas are usually born two at a time—and his brain has never worked properly. But he was tough. You had to be, growing up there.

Not that my puphood was _bad_. How could it be, with a vast playground open to us, and a mother who loved us? Every night, we romped beneath the stars while she roamed the land searching for food, and every day we slept at her warm flank.

Our only problem: hunger. Sometimes Mother would bring home meat; more often she wouldn't. I learned to catch rats, but even those were hard to find.

One day, an elephant came and died near our den. I woke that night to see dozens of hyenas gathered around it, including other pups. We feasted and played together for many nights, our laughter filling the air. Oh, that was a treat!

I also liked to be alone, hearing only the sound of my own paws as I wandered my world. I wanted to learn its secrets: where streams ended, if birds ever slept, how elephants found enough food to grow so big. But I couldn't. Free I might be in the elephant graveyard, but I was forbidden to see the place where all of this happened: the Pridelands.

Over and over Mother would remind me sternly: Never go into the Pridelands. If you enter by accident, get out as fast as possible and don't let any creature see you. Above all, STAY AWAY FROM LIONS!

"What's so bad about lions?" I would ask. All she would say was, "I hope you never find out."

Of course that made me I _want _to find out more than ever. Something in the Pridelands was too dangerous for even her, something that happened if you were seen, and being around lions made it worse What could that be? But I believed her.

So, naturally, Simba's birth confused me…


	2. Revelations

**A/N: Sorry if this is a bit slow and detailed. I wanted to get some background in, and I promise it won't set the pace for the story. **

_Wow, you're still here. I'm amazed that a stranger actually stayed around after I started talking. Maybe my story will finally be told! Don't forget that you're free to interrupt, or leave, whenever you want. Well, have some antelope meat—don't worry, it's fresh—and let's keep going, shall we?_

One morning when I was nearly grown but still living like a pup, I couldn't get to sleep. The ground seemed uneasy, vibrating slightly beneath me as though my stomach were growling, though we had eaten decently that night. Strange noises of different kinds, far away but loud, scurried around in my ears. I turned and rolled against my snoring siblings, but the disturbance only kept growing.

Unable to take it any longer, I stumbled out of the lair. Blazing, burning sunlight hit me like the paw of some huge beast. I backed hastily into the dark. After recovering from the shock, I went out again, slowly with closed eyes, allowing the light to filter through my eyelids and my body to absorb the heat. When both felt comfortable, I re-opened my eyes.

The graveyard was a maze of light and long shadows cast by the rising sun. Here, outside, the sounds were louder and the ground-vibrations stronger. It seemed to come from all directions, but was strongest in the south.

A shadow passed overhead, and I looked up. A huge flock of birds were vanishing behind the rise to the south—towards the Pridelands! Something big was happening there, maybe a migration like those I had heard of. I had to see it; my family couldn't stop me if they were sleeping!

Another flock passed, lower and slower. They were flamingos, huge pink birds, so much more beautiful and graceful in life than the bedraggled carcasses I'd only seen them as before. I began to run, keeping my gaze on them.

Have you ever noticed that it's hard to run while looking up? Especially in an elephant graveyard strewn with bones and jagged rocks. I kept tripping and slipping, hardly noticing the pain, worrying less about waking my family than about losing the birds. Somehow, I made it over the rise and then I really took off, pelting over level ground with the pink wings still flashing ahead.

Suddenly my legs tangled in something thin and tough, sending me sprawling. After a moment, I realized that the stuff was grass, unbelievably long and lush. I looked up for the flamingos—and something hurtled down, just missing my face. A blow to the head sent me flat in the grass, as something else pinned my tail painfully to the ground.

A second later, my tail was free. But the ground was really shaking now, and so was I. Peeking around, I saw the rear end of some big, horned creature disappearing south and from the north—horrors!—a whole herd of them!

I rose and sprinted west. But the grass kept catching my paws, and I was only just out of the herd's path when they overtook me. I cowered on my belly as they sprinted past, hooves striking the ground sometimes a centimeter away. (What's that? Yes, we use the metric system here.)

The animals—I learned later to identify them as wildebeests—didn't seem to notice me. Mother was right: the Pridelands were dangerous indeed!

At last they were gone. I stood up shakily and took off running after the sea of big brown butts. The grass grabbed at me, but with little jumps and some attention to paw-placement it wasn't really that bad. We crested a hill—and I stood staring at the sight below.

Animals! Elephants, gazelles, jackals, monkeys, a zillion kinds of birds and many others that I'd never seen anything like. More were entering the crowd—like my wildebeests, which galloped down and then halted—but those already there stood still and quiet. All were facing a weird rock formation, which seemed to be made of a huge, long stone balanced sideways on two others. On the top stone were lions.

Lions! I squeaked and ducked. But nothing happened. After a minute, I looked up again, peeking cautiously at the lions, trying to study them from my mothers' descriptions. There were several females and one male. A scrawny baboon stood in front of them, holding a lion cub.

I squeaked again. Cubs were the most dangerous lions to be around. Mother had told me: "If you get near a lion accidentally, stay still and silent and it might not notice you. But if it's a cub, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"

I was definitely dead if anyone noticed me here. But why weren't the other animals running? I cowered; waiting for them to see the cub and stampede back up the hill.

A deafening clamor rose suddenly from below. All together, the animals bent down in the lion's direction. Then they left. No stampede, no fright; they just walked or flew away in all directions, taking their time. Two elephants headed toward me and I ran for home, not wanting to get trampled again—or seen.

Hurrying north, even in my worry and a rising heat unlike any I'd ever felt, I couldn't help noticing how beautiful the Pridelands were. Birds twittered in the grass, the soil was warm and soft under my paws, great trees spread their shade here and there, and in the distance a lake glittered blue. I didn't know the names of these things then, but knew they were good. Why, I wondered were we hyenas kept out of this marvelous place?

Returning at last to my barren home and cool lair, I found my family still asleep. I curled carefully against my mother's flank and lay there a long time, pondering restlessly, until sleep finally caught me.

That evening, I was sot drowsy that when Mother stood up, I flopped to the ground. Banzai nudged me. "Hey sis, you getting up tonight?"

"Couldn't sleep last day," I mumbled. "Go away."

"Did you have a bad dream?" asked Mother.

"No. It was too noisy out and the ground was shaking." Well, that was the truth!

"Are you sure? Where was the noise coming from?" She sounded almost scared.

"South." I curled up tighter, tail over nose, and went back to sleep. When Ed woke me, chewing my mane and growling, Mother was gone.

The next morning, she still hadn't returned. I wondered if she had gone to the Pridelands after hearing of the strange disturbance there, and feared for her safety. Ed, though, went hysterical with fear about the big bad sun coming with his Mommy not there. He was such a baby, still is. By the time we got him to curl up with Banzai, they were both so exhausted that they feel right asleep. I, too worried to sleep, walked in circles until Mother finally returned. She looked tired and grim, but unhurt.

"Where were you, Mother?" I demanded. "Ed was going nuts with worry!"

"Banzai calmed him down, I see," she replied, glancing at them. "You should be taking care of your brother too, Shenzi. He's going to need both of you."

"I helped! Where were you?"

"You know he's not right in the head. He'll need to be taken care of all his life, especially now that—"

_"Where were you?!"_

She grimaced, ran a paw along the ground, and sighed. "I guess you'll find out soon anyway. OK. Remember when an elephant died here and lots of hyenas came to share it?"

"Yeah."

"They were our relatives, our clan. Hyenas aren't supposed to live in little families; we live in groups called clans. But our clan, the Nhamoyo, hasn't been together for a long time, and here's why. You know how I told you never to go into the Pridelands?"

"Yeah."

"It's controlled by lions, who hate hyenas."

"Why?"

"Oh, I don't know. I guess they're afraid we'd eat their cubs and compete with them for prey. And we would, given the chance. But so would leopards and jackals and other types that can live there, no problem. It's not fair, I know. But they're huge and strong, and all animals obey them, so there's nothing we can do about it.

"Lion leaders, called kings, have ruled the Pridelands as long as anybody can remember. Some kings were OK; they let us scavenge there if we stayed far away from them and didn't kill anything. But a while back, a lion called Mufasa became king, and he's really bad. He kills any hyena seen on his land, no questions asked. If he, or any animal serving him, caught you there, you'd be dead.

"Most of the good water and grass in the land is there, so most of the big animals are, too. Stuck out here, there hardly ever enough food for the whole clan; we were fighting over every bit. So we decided to break apart and forage only for ourselves until we could go back to the Pridelands. I was already pregnant with you and your brothers, so I brought you up here.

"Now, Mufasa has a brother, Scar—a good lion who understands that we're better as friends than enemies. He promised that if he ever became king, we'd be allowed into the Pridelands. We'd do anything to make that happen, of course, but all we could do was hope that Mufasa died while Scar was still young enough to rule.

"Yesterday, Mufasa's mate had a son, Simba. The noise you heard was the Prideland animals celebrating this. Why they're so happy about an animal that's sure to kill some of them later, I don't know.

"Last night, Scar came out here and called the Nhamoya clan together to share this news. That's where I've been. He's angry, of course—Simba is set to be king after Mufasa. If he, and we, will get our way, we can't leave it to chance because there's almost no chance that they'll both die soon. We've got to make it happen.

"You and your brothers are almost grown, Shenzi. Tonight I'll start teaching you to scavenge for yourselves, and then leave you this place. I'm going to join some other Nhamoya, starting to make battle plans with Scar. And you, living closer to the Pridelands than anyone else, are sure to lead the young fighters who will bring them about."

That night, Scar came to our home. It was my first time seeing a lion up close (of course) and I was awed. He walked silently, with a smooth grace that no hyena could ever have, cursed as we are with unevenly-long legs. His fur was the rich brown of Prideland soil, offset by a luxuriant, gleaming black mane. His brilliant green eyes bored into mine as he flowed up to me and placed a velvet paw on my head. "Little one," he purred. "You've been chosen to help me become your benevolent king. Are you ready to come when I need you?"

To serve this magnificent creature and earn entry into his glorious land? It was a no-brainer, or so I thought at the time."Yes, your future Majesty."


	3. New King

_**A/N:**_** I wrote most of this chapter years ago, but chronic arm pain and a deadly computer virus have long kept me from finishing it. I'd like to keep writing it, but can't say if or when I'll add another chapter. **

_I recently learned that the humans who had secretly watched us all and told the story of "The Lion King" were once sued by a researcher-of-hyenas for "defamation of character." Whoever you are, dear scientist, I thank you on behalf of my species. _

_OK, back to the story._

After teaching us how to find carcasses and beat the vultures off them without getting badly hurt, Mother left. The big birds terrified Ed (and not without reason—they're fierce!) so much that scavenging was beyond his ability. So Banzai and I took turns. Every night one of us would play with him and keep him from wandering off, while the other roamed the land in search of something remotely nourishing to bring home. We often had to eat dry bones - or nothing at all.

My longing for the Pridelands never died down. Many days, I would sneak away from my sleeping brothers to wander them, reveling in their beauty and watching, hidden, the goings-on of the creatures there. So many kinds, and so big and healthy! Sometimes when the night had yielded nothing, I killed and ate a hyrax, or other small animal—delicious! Oh, how I wanted to live there.

Trembling with fear but driven by curiosity, I also watched the lions. I learned to identify them: Simba, Mufasa, Nala, Sarabi, and others.

The longer I watched, the more I realized that Scar was only impressive when not compared with other lions. He slunk, while they strode proudly. His voice was a whine next to Mufasa's deep, ringing one. And he was small, with less muscle than the youngest of the adult lionesses. His coloring was handsomer, in my opinion, but a pretty pelt doesn't make a king.

However, he had a very good way of keeping us loyal: food. Sometimes he would visit us, bringing big slabs of fresh, tender meat glazed with fat. The scent alone drove us into groveling ecstasy, and the taste made me promise myself anew, every time, that I would do whatever it took to put that puny lion on the throne. His increasingly-evident disdain for our hungry eagerness – he clearly didn't know the feeling of starvation - was a small price to pay.

Maybe it sounds like I admired Mufasa. Not! He may have been a macho specimen of lionhood, but was also a total brute. He lazed around while the lionesses hunted, and then ate huge portions of whatever they brought back. He bullied Scar mercilessly. He had a snitch, a stuffy hornbill named Zazu, who shamelessly stuck his big beak in everyone else's business and reported it all daily. And, as I discovered one morning, he was a big fat hypocrite.

I was lying under a bush, watching Simba, now a spunky little guy, stroll by with his dad. As they came into earshot, Mufasa was saying something like "…you must honor and respect all living creatures." Huh? Hyenas hadn't gotten much respect from him.

They stopped as Zazu flew down. Perching on a rock, the bird proceeded to spout the gossip of the Pridelands with no consideration of who might hear. Honestly, I couldn't figure out how anybody there put up with him.

Simba had the bright idea to use him as a pouncing target. The little tattletale's frightened squawk as he got pinned to the ground, and his shaky takeoff afterward, were mighty satisfying - until he swooped down yelling, "Hyenas in the Pridelands!"

How had he seen me? No time to wonder. I whirled and sprinted off - but not fast enough. One blow of Mufasa's paw sent me flying through the air. I landed on my face, just as the pain hit my rear like a hundred bee stings at once. I staggered onto a bare circle of ground - and ran smack into Ed. We fell in a heap. "What the –"

"Let's get outta here!" Banzai burst from the grass on the clearing's opposite side and yanked me off Ed by the tail. He shoved Ed's flank. "Move!"

Too late. Mufasa had caught up, and all three of us went flying. They landed out of my sight.

"That was just a warning," he thundered. "If I see you here again, you will die!"

We sped for home as if our tails were on fire. Respect for all creatures, indeed.

Of course, once home, we had a fight.

"What were you doing, maggot-brain?" I screamed at Ed, who was curled, teeth chattering, in the farthest corner of the lair.

"He was following you!" growled Banzai, shoving himself between us. "He woke up and you weren't there, so he tracked your smell - into the Pridelands! What the heck were you doing there?"

"Exploring!"

"Exploring? Shenzi, we're not pups anymore! We've gotta look after each other. You can't go risking your butt just for fun - especially not in the Pridelands. Now you've got Mufasa after us. Maybe now you'll remember what Mother said, and stay away from lion cubs!"

"On the contrary," purred a voice. We looked up to see Scar sitting on a stone ledge, looking down his almost-kingly nose at us.

"Simba will come here soon," he continued. "Kill him."

"What – how –" spluttered Banzai.

"I trust even _you_ can think of some way to kill a tasty, helpless cub," Scar sneered, and vanished into the shadows.

Banzai stared after him for a while. Then he turned to me. "Did he just tell us to eat the Lion Prince?"

"Yeah," I said grimly.

"He's nuts! Mufasa will kill us!"

"I don't think Scar cares. In fact, he might kill us himself if we don't do as he says." I hated to say these words, but they made too much sense. Scar surely knew the danger he was putting us in.

Sure enough, Simba strutted into the graveyard late that afternoon. But he'd brought his female friend Nala, and the Snitch Bird.

I knew what I was supposed to do. One bite and the Pridelands would be mine. If I could believe Scar, that is. Ed was drooling, just waiting for my permission to attack. Fear and hunger fought in Banzai's eyes. Our guts all growled at the sight of those plump little bodies.

But I couldn't do it. The Snitch would see, and tell Mufasa, and we'd be goners. Even if we killed him, the king would find out somehow. Nala was an innocent bystander who didn't deserve to die for politics. And the truth is, I kind of admired Simba. Walking fearlessly into a forbidden place, confronting three menacing hunters much bigger than him…jeez, I wished I had his nerve. I know, he'd been revered and protected all his life so didn't really get the concept of danger, but still. He was so convinced we couldn't hurt him that I almost believed it myself.

Banzai and I tried to work up each other's nerves with cub-eating jokes, but the trio took off while we were laughing. (What? No, we didn't sing a song about it. I wish we were that creative.) Banzai and Ed noticed them escaping, and of course I had to join in the chase. I let the cubs get away by catching the Snitch instead.

Then I made a mistake. I should have killed him right then, or at least broken his wings. But he had annoyed me so much in the past - even telling Simba rude lies about us - that instead I dunked him in a hot spring where we liked to bathe. Is it my fault the nice warm water isn't as much fun for a little bird? But the spring erupted in gas and steam as it sometimes does, blasting him into the sky, and he shot off for home.

Now we were in trouble. He would report us. Nothing for it but to do the deed fast, we thought. Simba kindly showed himself by yelling at us, and we sped after him again. Soon he was trapped in a dead-ended stone tunnel. We closed in, my heart pounding as I opened my mouth—

And Mufasa arrived. Once again, our butts got royally kicked. Now that I have pups and know a parent's fear, I'm gratefully amazed he didn't kill us. I probably would have, in his place. But at the time my gratitude was squashed by fear, fury, and humiliation.

Scar arrived as we were licking our wounds and blaming each other. Now we're in for it, I thought. But miraculously, he didn't kill us either. He fed us and then, through a fairly rude (but cleverly rhyming) song-and-dance, informed us that he now planned to kill Simba and Mufasa together. Why he didn't do it in the first place, I don't know. We all cheered up at the prospect of a safer second chance, and humored him by joining in the performance.

As the dust settled, I suddenly noticed a bunch of hyenas standing around us. "What the - who are you?"

My mother came forward, grinning from ear to ear. "We're your family, Shenzi. Didn't I tell you we would return when it was time to fight for the Pridelands?"

As it turned out, we weren't expected to do much fighting. Scar didn't believe that hyenas - even a dozen of us - could fight well enough to beat a pride of lions. This further lowered my opinion of _him,_ at the same time as it relieved me. That's messed up, I know.

He _had_ gathered my family, though. Along with my parents, there were my father's father and sister, my mother's two younger brothers Rinku and Rinali, and Rinku's mate Leina and two grown daughters. No pups – there hadn't been enough food in the desert through which they'd been wandering. My mother had led them safely through their hungry exile. Now, after introducing us all, she described Scar's orders.

We were supposed to chase a wildebeest herd through a gorge at the south end of the Pridelands, into which Scar had lured Simba and Mufasa. Mufasa luckily didn't suspect Scar in Simba's visit to us. But it was still a crazy plan, timing-wise: we had to help Scar maneuver the herd to the top of the gorge without them panicking or any lions noticing, wait (and hope they didn't leave) while he positioned Simba without any lions noticing, run out and scare them in the right direction when he appeared off to the side, and then hide while he went and sent Mufasa down there before the herd ran out the gorge's other side. We could only hope the lionesses would never suspect who had started the stampede, though I think that if we (but not he) were found out, he wouldn't care. A nearly impossible task, right?

Amazingly, it almost worked. Everyone went where they were supposed to go. I ran behind a wildebeest herd once again, this time (I thought) toward Simba's death instead of his birth. We brought down a straggler in the gorge – the first big animal I'd ever helped to kill. But just as I was about to plunge my head into the warm carcass, I heard Scar's voice: "Simba, what have you done?"

I looked up. A bit further down the gorge, amid settling dust clouds, beside Mufasa's body, a living Simba stood whimpering before Scar. How the heck had he survived?

Scar told Simba to "run away." Then, as the cub loped off, he looked over at me. "Kill him."

Yeah, he could've just had us do it right there. But he wanted to get one more moment of pleasure from seeing his victim's frightened, futile run. Sicko.

With us after him, Simba took off. Have you ever seen a lion cub run for its life? They're _fast_. He streaked out the far end of the gorge – right into a giant thornbush. Banzai was a little ahead of me, and shot into the bush, then jumped about two meters in the air, screaming. I halted, and he landed next to me, in time to see Simba emerge unharmed from the thicket's other side and run off across an endless-looking expanse of red-gold sand.

Banzai told me to chase him. I refused, staring at the sudden change in the landscape. Lush grasslands between an elephant graveyard and a desert…boy, the Pridelands were weird. I didn't understand this geography, and it still puzzles me a bit. But I thought I knew one thing: a pampered lion cub wouldn't last long in the desert.

So we returned to Scar, said we'd eaten Simba, and feasted on the wildebeest, feeling warm satisfaction at a job well done. How could we have guessed that a warthog and a meerkat would lose their minds and adopt one of their predators? (Talk about violating the laws of nature! Would they have saved a dying hyena pup? Not likely! Anyway...)

That night, Scar declared himself king, and announced a new partnership between lions and hyenas. I listened, heart pounding. How I wanted to believe that we would finally be treated as equals!

He acted sad, and the lionesses seemed to think he had nothing to do with the "tragedy." But I knew he was worried. Before going to sleep in Mufasa's den, he imprisoned Zazu in there behind a piece of wildebeest ribcage and ordered all of us hyenas to lie at the entrance.

On my long-awaited first night in the Pridelands, I barely slept. My relatives snored. Scar snored louder. Zazu quietly sniffled and moaned. Night insects chirped and rattled. And in a nearby baobab tree, Mufasa's baboon friend Rafiki chanted until the moon set, howling strange words in a voice full of sorrow and despair. That monkey had loved the old lion for some reason, and his grief weighed on my mind. I wanted to go and grovel before him, yelling "Yes, I did it, I'm sorry, I wish I hadn't, just please stop!" How could I keep living here, amid so much emotion?

But when I awoke to warm stone beneath me, a chorus of bird song, and the laughter of my cousins as they rolled in tall grass which glowed green beneath the rising sun, the guilt and worry vanished beneath excitement and wonder. At last, these beautiful lands were mine to wander without fear and hunt to my belly's content. Little did I know what lay ahead.

_What? Rafiki's actually a mandrill? But I've heard him call himself a baboon. Whatever. I'm going to take a walk. See you later._

**A/N: I have no idea how many hyenas Scar commanded at the start of his reign, so I arbitrarily settled on a dozen. More may arrive later. **


End file.
